This Is Not How It's Supposed To Be
by goddessa39
Summary: James Potter knows the world is not screwed on right. His family is dead and this is not how it's supposed to be... AU Halloween.


**This Is Not How It Is Supposed To Be**

Harry Potter belong to JK Rowling and I am borrowing them just for a moment.

T for Teen, I guess...

James, with pieces of Sirius, Remus, Albus, Hedwig, others...

James/Lily mentions.

This started as a want for the scene of James wondering about the strange owl around his house, but went a lot differently.

I find this a bit odd because it is usually Harry I think on.

Written: 4/20/2011

* * *

><p><em>[10]<em>

"Lily," James says pleadingly, "take Harry and Run! I'll hold him off." He has only been a father for a little over a year and this woman he has loved for longer than should be possible is so firmly in his heart that her death is not an option in his mind.

Even if he had to quit his Auror training for his new family and their welfare, those instincts have been trained to a point that he has not lost and he is bolting out the door and down the stairs with quick and unmeasured steps. The carpet on the staircase is all that stops his feet from frictioning and propelling him any faster and head-first with gravity. His wand is out, army ready, and the door is blown in.

One large chunk hits his collarbone and he loses his breath. A stunner is only one of a dozen various chaining spells that blast towards the front of the house towards a monstrous and black-caped man. His blood gushes to the surface in his panic and excitement-fuelled energy of need.

A painful spell takes him down off his feet to the ground. The blood pooling around him his warm and red but the wetness is outweighed by the fury. Someone has come into his house, his property, to hurt him and his family.

Harry, he thinks, Lily. He wants to cry because the feeling of wards holding back a portkey that was doubtless Lady Potter trying to get out pulses against his metaphorical skin. And then darkness.

* * *

><p><em>[9]<em>

He wakes to Sirius, his brother in all but blood. Sirius who was Harry's godfather, but those links to [BloodFamilyLove] Lily and Harry in the back of his head is smothered out. James Potter looks up into grey orbs with hazel eyes gone empty.

His mouth forms a harsh snarl that makes the pureblood scion of Potter, the newly widowed man without a child, malicious. "Wormtail," it whispers in the flames of a once-beautiful summer house.

Sirius pulls him up despite the blood and they go tangled up to the nursery over flaming carpets and tumbling wood.

It is Sirius who looks over with a horrified, stricken "Lily," and a muted howl of "Harry." Because Sirius has known with the thick blood handed down the Black line that he will never have children of his own. It was Harry that should have been the Marauder Heir all around, with a slight hopeful eye on the future. Lily had wanted a number of rugrats running around, none named after flowers or stupidly arrogant names.

It is Sirius with his long dark hair falling over two corpses that closes Lily's horrified, open eyes. Harry is curled up against his mother in death with a sleeping pose that almost makes it beautiful.

All James can do, staggered and fallen against a burning doorway, is whisper a traitorous word. "Wormtail."

* * *

><p><em>[8]<em>

Hagrid's presence at the house confuses James, because the property itself still should have been brought under the Fidelius. However, he keeps that thought on hold for later. Moony needs to know, and then they are going hunting.

* * *

><p><em>[7]<em>

The first snowfall is punctuated with quiet moments like in a glass snow globe where the outside world has no effect. Large pieces of ice float slowly like the leaves in the fall that change color. The ground is painted in untouched white. James stairs through this as the people leave in small groups after paying him a sorrowful word.

Despite the usual fair, James had made sure the single coffin that laid his family in the ground was protected with all manner of wards and curses. There was no way Voldemort was digging up his family for a few more inferi.

Lily had been buried in a pale coffin, wood grown to match the cold snow of an early winter. James Potter had made sure that their baby boy was with her, to always be protected and held, even in death. James watches as the coffin slowly sunk into the ground and a cold finality settled into him.

His whole family was in there, what should have been the future.

His hair is as messy and dark as usual but he needs a haircut. Lily should have had him in a chair with a pair of scissors and warm water running down the sink. Harry should have been sleeping lightly for a nap in bassinet in the kitchen. Beside James, his friends stand like hulking gargoyles around him, protecting him from the world, or maybe just keeping him standing and not cursing ever single person that should have been buried in his family's stead. His eyes are darker than hazel now and deep pits of shadow lay on his face in rings of a tree.

Sirius has no straight hair. It looks like a waterfall of chaos. Lily would have told him to straighten it, to hold it together with a hair band. But Lily is not here. Remus Lupin is to James's right and his brown hair [with premature grey streaks] is cut, but the eyes are almost golden and there is something in the set of his mouth that stinks of [primalangermadness] something not quite human being in pain.

* * *

><p><em>[6]<em>

_Lily Annabeth Evans Potter_

_30 January, 1960-31 October, 1981_

_Harry James Potter_

_31 July, 1980, 31 October, 1981_

_Sabyl Lily Potter_

_31 October, 1981_

_James "Prongs" Henry Potter_

_27 March, 1960-31 October, 1981- ?_

_Called to soon from life, Death held out a hand and took too many._

* * *

><p><em>[5]<em>

The Minister calls James Potter to her office one day to ask him back to work, straight from training. She pushes it, but he denies it. She calls him a coward for not doing his duty, for ignoring the war.

The deaths of his family that could have been saved are a sore point, an aching and gaping hole. The Minister should have known better.

Later, she will wake broken with black eyes and unable to move. There will be no memory of asking James Potter into the Ministry, of the man ever coming inside, or of the person who barged in and hurt her.

* * *

><p><em>[4]<em>

James clenches his fist over a copy of the Daily Prophet as a traitor's name is headlined in metal bars. In the picture, black cloaked figures seeking memories of sweet times flow around a person in chain.

Vengeance has a chokehold on him, though, so he call on his brothers. Vengeance, or justice, it is all the same.

Azkaban is a dark place full of screaming floors and ["Lily, take Harry and run! Lily, take Harry- Lily!] memories of pain pull to the surface of every mind, entombed or not. A stag, a grim, and a werewolf sneak through floors and hallways where dementors flow in slow, amiable cruelty.

Wormtail fears them and his screams mix into those of other prisoners, but his body suffers far more than should be lethal.

Justice or vengeance, James knows his family is still dead and he and his brothers, hollow.

* * *

><p><em>[3]<em>

James has nothing in his heart now, and even less he cares to do, so instead he settles into a slow and agonizing madness. Even the dreams helped along by potions end in the nightmare of his son's last Halloween.

The last Potter was not what anyone would recall with books in his hand but brains were not for want, so libraries across the country of his own and friendly Families are searched through for various mentions of unusual magics. A few Death Eaters die in one or another crossfire but nobody minds.

Sirius is always with him, and Remus too when he is able. Full moons are spent in whatever forest is closest before they are back to their studying. There is no laughter now. All that is left is a quiet fury, a hatred at other people and especially of the cloaked madmen.

Mentions of the Peverell's and a physical interpretation of Death make James curious so Remus entombs himself in a library for a weak straight and comes out angry. Sirius marks Albus down as a potential enemy as the last Potter goes to confront the man who had decided to confiscate a Family Cloak when it could have saved a family.

The last three marauders have a potion with an old man's name on it, and with the injection, however forced, are granted tales of prophecies and past crimes and a lifetime of mistakes. They also get enough information on Snape to find Voldemort.

A week later, Hogsmaede wakes to Albus Dumbledore dead in the snow, and Severus Snape hanging by one branded arm.

* * *

><p><em>[2]<em>

The Unspeakables and DMLE are greeted with a note, just after Christmas, of Voldemort's location. It is unsigned and slightly singed. When they do nothing, they are granted a package on the 28th of December. It contains bloody remains and the Dark Lord Voldemort's dismembered head.

Later, Malfoy Manor has almost been burned to the ground, and incoming government spooks and violent wand-waving people find a meeting of Death Eaters surrounded by a giant alighted rune-made ritual table.

It had been a call for Justice, and it had been granted.

For many years, Unspeakables will study it and search for the creator. They will never connect it to the Marauders but they will try.

* * *

><p><em>[1]<em>

James Potter sits in an office of Godric's Hollow. The house has been fixed and the rooms made to look normal. Moony is off sleeping off a transformation, and Sirius is out for a walk.

The three have trapped themselves in a world on the edge of expectation. For ten years they have holed themselves off from the world, wizarding or muggle. All that connects them is a pair of house elves who go for groceries, and do the laundry.

The night is still dark, but the morning is near.

With a strong eye, through glasses, he watches a white creature feather its way around the horizon. This bird is strange and he wonders at it. The owl is smart, is it will land on a sill to take a strip of food, occasionally, but the way it circles the house, as if searching for something inside, is a curious thing.

For seven years, he will watch the ownerless white owl as it swoops in and out of the house as if she lives there, searching with smart eyes for someone that is not there. James never names her because the bird does not belong to him. Sirius calls her 'Amber-eyes' when she floats gently through the kitchen. Remus always has a few strips of pig meat waiting at the window sills, the many that there are.

Nobody says anything much about her though, because the birds favorite perch is the crib in the nursery that goes unused, the room they never step into, but will open the door and stair.

The house is fit for a family, and indeed, each can imagine that any minute, Lily will walk in cooing to little Harry and the future Prongslette with a happy eye.

Only 'Amber-eyes' goes into the room with the impossible future designed for it, into the crib that is so empty. The owl lives in the house too, and seems to search for a world, for people, that are not there.

* * *

><p><em>[0]<em>

There are things called Fate and Destiny, though many do not believe in them. Prophecy is often self-fulfilling, if it even comes true. Some people are catalysts in a world filed with possibilities and strange things like magic.

Hermione Granger is killed in a car accident at the age of four. Ron Weasley drowns in the pond a year later. Ginny Weasley does not even make it that long, suffering from an early case of the chicken pox. Luna Lovegood dies with her mother. Neville died just hours after what should have been his god brother.

Gabrielle Delacour dies when she is six, in a strange pool of water on the opposite side of the world than she was moments earlier as mermaids rip her apart. The Creevy brothers are never born as their father was killed in a convenience store robbery in Little Winging.

Draco Black is raised by his adopted mother and biological aunt Andromeda.

Dudley Dursley dies of Shaken Baby syndrome.

...if some people look up into the sky when they are resting, and think that the world is a little off color, maybe tilting little in the middle of a sneeze... well, it does not matter now, does it.

* * *

><p><strong>FIN.<strong>

Okay, this is the end. I hope you enjoyed it. This came suddenly and I just wrote this so expect things like spelling problems and tenses mashed together. Wait a moment, I sense something coming! It's an...

* * *

><p><strong>...OMAKE<strong>

_[+1]_

_[Alt. 1]_

James Potter sits in an office of Godric's Hollow. The house has been fixed and the rooms made to look normal. Moony is off sleeping off a transformation, and Sirius is out for a walk.

The door opens and a red-headed woman with emerald green eyes walks in. Her belly is slightly extended with signs of pregnancy.

She walks over to her quiet husband who greets her with a happy, hazel set of eyes and bends down to kiss him and then their sleeping boy. Harry sleeps a lot, and is a great baby who has learned to talk in strange sentences and walk a few feet at a time on his own by the time spring rolls around. Pink sakuras fall from the trees a world away but now the sun arches over the horizon and the scent of nearby spring fills noses with pollen and flower scents.

Lily cups her belly and cherishes Live as the memories of darkness and being dead sweep at her unconsciousness. Secrets go unspoken, and she smiles as her little boy blinks away with eyes so like her own emerald gaze. He smiles when he sees her and mumbles something that might be 'hold me' or something else entirely.

James grins and bounces him, just as a beautiful bird swoops in with a dead mouse. James laughs even if Lily is disgusted. Harry reaches for the bird who had come to them suddenly and without thought or purchase.

In this time, there is Life.

* * *

><p><strong>FIN.<strong>

Okay, that's it folks.

Adieu.


End file.
